Procrastination is still for losers*

Tag Archives: Tiffany & Co

What do you do when the ends won’t meet, money-wise I mean, when you work, you care for your family and have next to no social life yet the money is still never enough? Look for a better paid job, yep good luck with that in the current jobs market. So if there’s no prospect of more pay you have to tighten your belt on all the things that money has to cover right?

Every month Geordie and me sit down with the kitchen calendar and plan out what needs to be spent for the month. We’ve resorted to walking around Tesco using the calculator on my phone as we shop to make sure we don’t go over budget, it’s embarrassing as hell but it’s got to be done so our kids can have birthday presents and school uniforms etc. You might think well why don’t we both work? I’m still at home with our youngest who is 1 now and would have no trouble in going to nursery. When you do the maths I would be going to work for £1.26p an hour once childcare and travel costs are covered. Is it worth it to pay someone else to care for our daughter, not to us, no.

Recently we were a little short for our daughters birthdays which conveniently follow one after another in fairly quick succession. In the last few weeks we needed a small cash boost following our washing machine breaking, the girls snapping their bunk-beds into pieces by jumping on them to Jessie J and our car breaking down 150 miles away from home…September has not been kind to us.

(Photo credit: Jewels Globe)

From past experiences I’m very wary of accumulating debt and friends have warned me against the dangers of the quick pay-day loans that are popping up with their 400% interest rates all over the place, so I decided that my engagement ring made for good collateral against a short buy back loan with a national retailer. Apparently this way of raising cash against items you own seems to be the way forward, there are no credit checks, small interest rates and basically if you don’t pay back the money as agreed in the contract, you lose your goods. I’m new to this whole thing so I thought I’d wander around a little and find out what the best deal was, five stores later I was starting to lose hope.

According to the bored looking staff in every store I wandered into, diamond solitaire rings are ten a penny! I hope Geordie won’t mind me telling you this but I know he paid almost three thousand pounds for my engagement ring which to me is a hell of a lot of money. It’s just 18 months old and has certification and paperwork etc. The best possible price I could get to either sell or secure a temporary loan was £200. My beautiful ring that means the world to me is worth £200 to Cash Converters! Gob smacked isn’t the word. Another retailer offered me £60 for the white gold band but said they would chuck the diamond! On hearing this I put the ring back on my finger and as I type it is shining proudly like it has done since the day Geordie asked me to marry him.

I am all for finding alternative ways to make money while I’m not physically working, I’ve used Ebay and Preloved to sell some items to make a little money but it’s back pocket change really and not a reliable source of income. I’ve done some pretty crappy jobs over the years and I’m far from work shy, it’s just increasingly difficult to find a job with a good salary and affordable childcare.

I suppose I’ll have to rush the little one into potty training to save money on nappies next?